


Last Year's Language

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Northern Lights Farm [2]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, New Year's Eve, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 16:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17369093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: Shane and Lydia spend a quiet New Year's Eve at the farmhouse, which leaves Shane a lot of room to ruminate. Post-eight heart event, pre-relationship.





	Last Year's Language

**Author's Note:**

> Like the other fics in this series, this stands alone (though it follows the same Shane and the same Farmer as the others do, albeit at an earlier date). Title references "Little Gidding" by T.S. Eliot.

Sometimes, Shane thought, it seemed as if Lydia had decided to skip straight past friendship and right on to old married couple, disgustingly comfortable with one another.

Not that they were...not that _she_ would...there was no point in even ruminating on the subject, even though ruminating was probably the only thing he did well. Turning thoughts and ideas over and over and over in his mind until they'd turned into something monstrous and horrifying: his specialty.

This was different. This, he wished he could turn into something shiny and good. But he was incapable of that, so it was better that he left it alone entirely.

He tried to, anyway. Despite that silent vow, he still found it— _her_ —in his thoughts more often than not. It wasn’t the first, or the last, or the only way his brain had betrayed him, so he tolerated this behavior and hoped that it would pass, just like everything else.

But. He was supposed to be trying to be kinder to himself. (His therapist said that this was really being “fair” to himself. He disagreed. They compromised on “kind.”) And if he was being kinder to himself, then he had to admit that the situations he kept putting himself in did not really make it easy to forget how he felt about her. Or how the chemicals in his brain thought they felt about her, at least.

Now that—that wasn't fair. Not to him, but to Lydia. Of course he liked her. He could hardly believe that there were people in Pelican Town who didn't—but they existed, supposedly. He steered clear of them.

If only he could stop there, with liking her, and be satisfied.

Lydia picked up a card from the draw pile, tucking it into the middle of her hand, the way she did with every card she picked up. She studied it a long time, her brow furrowed in concentration, and then lifted the whole fan of cards to conceal her mouth. It was no use; he heard her jaw crack all the way across the table from the strength of the yawn. Farmers were not meant to stay up so late—not even on New Year’s Eve. Didn’t matter that winter was still desperately hanging on, that nothing was growing on Northern Lights Farm; she always found a way to occupy herself. Judging by the bruise on the hand holding the cards, she’d probably been back to the mines today.

“We can pretend we made it to midnight,” he offered.

She glared over her cards at him, her eyes bloodshot. “You just want to get out with your dignity intact.” She tapped the pad of paper where she was keeping score.

“I’m behind by more than a hundred points, last I checked,” he said dryly. “As usual, there's no escaping with my dignity.”

The cards lowered a little, enough for him to see her brief smile—quickly overcome by another yawn. “You could still come back,” she said, jumping from mild trash talk to encouragement instantly. “We’ve got twenty-seven minutes. A lot can change in twenty-seven minutes.”

He rolled his eyes; she discarded another card. His turn. He picked up the card she’d dropped, inspecting it against his hand. Two of hearts. Enough to complete his Ace-Two-Three-Four run, and with a couple of other three of a kinds…

He laid down his cards, surprised at his good luck. “Gin.”

“Fuck,” she sighed, laying down her cards, too, and began to count up what she owed him, pencil in hand. He'd caught her with a couple of face cards unaccounted for. “See? I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

She penciled in the new scores, elbow on the table, chin in hand, while he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle, watching her out of the corner of his eye. There was a big get-together at the Stardrop tonight, but Lydia had opted out, despite half a dozen separate invitations. She could have been toasting with the rest of the town right now; most of them liked her pretty well, after all, a few idiots notwithstanding.

But instead, she was here. She'd invited him and Jas over, promised hot drinks and a towering stack of brownies and entertainment. And he'd been too selfish to turn her down, even though she'd have been better off mingling, drinking with all the people who could still drink without nearly killing themselves. She probably wished she was there.

No. No, that was last year's language. Lydia didn't do anything she didn't want to do. He knew that.

Even though he was sure that this was boring. That _he_ was boring. She had to be bored.

She yawned again, proving his point.

"Sorry," she said, her eyes drooping a little. "I shouldn't have gone to the mines today."

He glanced at the bruise on her hand again. It wasn't about him, as usual; he was blowing things out of proportion, as usual.

"That's nothing to worry about, right?" he asked, nodding at the hand.

She held it out in front of her while he dealt the cards, frowning, turning it this way and that. "Nah. I've had worse."

His stomach twisted. The memory of that night—it hadn't been so long ago, just earlier this winter—made his blood run cold. His mind, which had always been more his enemy than anything else, sometimes reminded him of it at moments when he was otherwise just fine: the strange huddled shape she'd made on her porch, the snow caught in her eyelashes, the blood dried on her face—

"I'm okay," her voice said, quiet, and he snapped back to the present to find himself holding the deck, both their hands dealt. Hastily, he put the stack of cards down between them.

"Yeah, I know," he said, picking up his hand.

When he glanced up again, checking to see if she'd picked up a card, she was watching him; her hazel eyes were murky in the firelight, her teeth worried at her lower lip, and his stomach twisted in an entirely different—almost entirely pleasant—way.

"I'm careful," she said. "I promise. Way more careful than I was that night."

"I know," he said again, and then, "I'll just feel better when you're back to swearing at the sprinklers, is all."

She laughed; her eyes twinkled. "It's nice of you to worry about me," she said, teasing, and finally gathered up her cards to take a look at them.

"I do," he said. It was important for her to know that, he thought. That she wasn't the one doing all the worrying. "Worry about you. But I know you can take care of yourself."

She wasn't laughing anymore; her features had fallen into more serious lines. He should have let it go, should have let her make her joke and brush it off.

"To be honest with you, I...I'll feel better when I'm back to swearing at the sprinklers, too. It's an adventure down there, but…" She trailed off, eyes wandering her cards, frowning.

“But?” he prompted.

She shook her head, gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know. It gets lonely.”

Strange. Somehow, he had a hard time imagining that Lydia ever got lonely. He could arrive at the farm any time of the day or night, and she would be in the middle of some task—swearing at the sprinklers, her hands full of a piece of lumpy knitting, four pots and pans on the stove with something delicious simmering inside. Sometimes just lying sprawled out on the grass with her dog half on top of her, talking to him like he was a person.

She always seemed so _occupied_ , like her life alone was so rich and full. His life alone had never felt like that.

But she hadn't said, “It gets scary,” or “it gets cold,” or “it gets bloody.” _Lonely_. In a dangerous mine full of dangerous creatures, she got lonely.

It seemed like an invitation, somehow. Or maybe a question she couldn't bring herself to ask. He knew all about those.

“If you want company,” he said, before he could second-guess himself, “just ask, okay?”

She looked up; her mouth opened, just slightly, then closed again. For a long moment, she considered him instead of her cards, as if weighing his hardiness against rock crabs and enraged bats and all the varieties of slimes.

“Really?” she asked, and though his instinct was to interpret this as judgmental, as dubious, he heard something else entirely in her voice, something even he couldn't miss. Hope. Relief.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, as long as I’m not working, or busy with Jas…" That was a lot of caveats, but he had to pay attention to his responsibilities; she understood. "I can come with you whenever. Really.”

She smiled, a slow, liquid thing entirely unlike her usual quick grins, and his heart made an astonishing effort to break through his ribcage and throw itself at her feet.

He was doing a great job stifling that crush. Really, really great. It would evaporate any day now.

“I would like that,” she said. “Next Saturday, maybe?”

He nodded, afraid of what might come out of his mouth next if he didn’t keep it firmly shut, and they returned to their card game. She stayed quiet this time, but whenever she lowered her cards and exposed her face he saw that smile, firmly entrenched, and thought, **_I_** _did that, somehow._ His brain was already feverishly working on how to achieve a repeat performance.

She won, of course, but the margin was narrower than he’d thought it would end up being. He could read that in all kinds of nasty ways. An omen that he would always fall a little short no matter how hard he tried, maybe. But he tried to think of a kinder way to interpret it, instead. Like he was catching up, slowly but surely.

Instead of turning on the TV, they watched the clock on her mantle, the tarnished golden second hand creeping steadily closer to midnight—and then, in an instant, it passed through the peeling _XII_.

"Well, that's that," Lydia said matter-of-factly.

He drained the last of his cider. “I should probably get going.”

She yawned, so wide that he feared for her jaw. “Need help with Jas?” she asked, even though it was clear how hard she was fighting to stay awake; she wouldn’t make the minute walk to the truck, let alone the twenty-minute walk back from the ranch.

“I'm pretty sure I can get her to the car.”

Lydia pushed back from the table and stretched, arms reaching out above her head, and he made himself look away, pushed back from the table himself and went to collect Jas from beneath the pile of blankets in Lydia's room. In the semi-darkness, he didn't even give himself permission to look around; it felt too much like spying on her, like an intrusion.

Jas, he'd learned early on in their life together, was a light sleeper. He focused entirely on peeling back the blankets without waking her up. No sooner had he set aside the second one, though, than her eyes opened, glinting in the low light.

"What time is it?" she asked, her voice still slurred from sleep.

"Little after midnight. Time to go home."

Her face scrunched up in a devastated scowl. "I missed it," she lamented, wide-awake in an instant, throwing back the rest of the blankets and nearly burying Shane beneath them. "You should've woken me up!"

He was too old and tired to feel anything in particular at the passing of the hand of the clock over midnight, but with a suddenness that winded him, he remembered being a kid, imagining some magic in it all, that this year would be _the_ year, and he was seeing it right from the beginning.

It had all been bullshit, obviously, but it didn’t have to be for Jas.

He managed to evict himself from all the quilts. “Sorry, kiddo,” he said, and meant it. “Next year I’ll wake you up, okay?”

With a huff, she threw herself out of the bed and flounced into the main room. Shane made it to the doorway just in time to see Jas slam the front door behind her, not even acknowledging Lydia.

“Ouch,” Lydia said, laying a hand over her heart.

“Yeah, we’ve really offended her,” he said, frustrated. "Sorry. She's not usually like that. Even when I screw up."

"Hey. Don't say that. You didn't know."

He shrugged, helplessly, and saw Lydia's eyes narrow in calculation despite her exhaustion.

"I think she’ll forgive us," she declared. "Especially if you take some of these home with you.” She pointed out the stack of brownies. “I’ll pack them up.”

He would have protested, except that he understood very well by now, after nearly a year of knowing her, that little else in the world gave her more pleasure than foisting food off on people. He therefore endured the brownie acquisition process in silence.

“Thanks for having us,” he said, the tupperware container of brownies in hand, standing in the open door.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, and then, her face more serious, “hey. I know you hate talking about this stuff, but I just wanted to say—it’s been a good year for you, you know? You’ve done some incredible things.”

He had his own opinions on what things qualified as _incredible_ , but he didn’t like making Lydia look like she’d just watched him kick a puppy, so he kept his mouth shut.

“And my year’s been pretty great, too,” she said, in a smaller voice. Her eyes fell from his face to study his shoes. “In no small part thanks to you, so...thanks.”

Quickly—so quickly he wasn’t entirely sure what her intention was, and so he stood there, frozen in place—she stepped closer and hugged him, arms looping up around his shoulders. Maybe this was an instinctive human thing that he _hadn’t_ missed out on, because it only took a heartbeat for him to react, one arm wrapping around her, the other hand holding the brownies aloft.

For a moment, all attempts to stifle whatever this was failed. He held her, and she didn't pull away; she pressed closer. There was a nice, clean scent to her hair—he'd caught brief hints of it before, but now he realized there was a sweet, flowery aroma beneath, simple, like the wildflowers that grew rampant on the land she hadn't had time to cultivate yet in warmer weather.

For a moment, he let himself want exactly what he wanted. To imagine not going home, after all.

But only for a moment.

He convinced himself to loosen the arm that was around her, to begin to pull away. They were still safely in the territory of normal friend stuff. Hugs on special occasions. Awkward, but nice, sentiments. In limited capacity this was all completely, totally normal.

But as he pulled back, she turned her head. Her lips brushed his cheek, a touch so soft and light that he would later half-convince himself he'd imagined it. Only then did she let him go.

In his opinion, that stretched the boundaries of _normal_ a bit.

“Happy New Year,” she said, her voice soft, and automatically he stepped back, clearing the doorway, his mind too jumbled to produce any coherent words. She began to shut the door.

“Hey,” he said, the word struggling through his throat, which seemed to have attempted to close entirely.

He’d said nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , and some reciprocation was probably warranted, right? Normal? She paused, door still half-open, waiting, and he cast around frantically for words that would actually match, that would actually mean anything. Not his strong suit.

“It was thanks to you,” he said, finally. “You know that, right? You stuck your neck out for me when...I mean. I was an asshole to you.”

She raised one eyebrow. That smile was still there, somehow. What were the parameters for it? He had no idea.

“It was worth it,” she said, and shut the door.

He stood there, still stunned, for a good ten seconds; and then, remembering Jas, he trotted over to the truck.

He couldn't ruminate on any of _that_. The last sixty seconds were strictly off-limits for rumination. Not for fear that he'd tarnish them—or maybe, yes, actually, he could very well tarnish them. By believing that any of it had meant more than it did.

He expected to find Jas sulking in the passenger seat, but instead she was upright and alert as he climbed up to the driver’s side, brownies in hand. He set them down before he could drop them and searched his pockets for the keys, a little unnerved by how closely she was watching him.

“Can I ask you something?” Jas said.

“Yeah, of course,” he said, expecting her to bargain for a brownie somehow.

“Do you like her?”

He paused in the act of shoving the keys in the ignition. “Who, Lydia?”

Jas sighed impatiently and crossed her arms over her chest. “No, Buttons,” she said sarcastically, naming Lydia’s first cow. “Of course, _Lydia_.”

“Well, yeah. We’re friends.”

She gave him a look, a look that seemed way too sharp for a seven-year-old. “That’s it?” she pressed.

“Yeah,” he said, even though his stomach tied itself in another knot around the lie. “That’s it. Why?”

“I just really like Lydia, too,” she said, wiggling deeper into her seat. “That’s all.”

She was definitely hinting at something, but he wasn’t about to take that bait. “Yeah? That why you didn’t even say goodbye to her?”

Guilt flashed over her face. “Is she mad?” she asked worriedly.

“No, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to say you’re sorry next time you see her.”

She nodded, clearly relieved, and lapsed into silence. He knew better than to think the topic was forgotten, but for now, she seemed willing to drop it. Someday, though...maybe she wouldn’t be.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do then.


End file.
